Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 70515 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70515 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Mr. Crow, my now husband.
The father of my soon-to-be third born child.
“Is that right?” he teased.
I hooked my hands underneath my belly and shrugged. “I can’t help it.”
He rolled his eyes. “No, you sure can’t, can you?”
HAGGARD
The anger at seeing my truck completely destroyed dissipated the moment that I walked into my house and listened to my wife—God, even after all this time, it was still exhilarating as fuck to hear her called ‘wife’ in my head—talk about her father.
My daughter had snuck in at some point, Clem being very cagey as she did, making sure not to make any eye contact whatsoever.
“He was the biggest man in the world,” she said as she lay on the bed. “One time, when we were kids, my dad took me on a motorcycle ride. I’d never, not ever, gotten him to say yes to a ride. Something about it being ‘really dangerous.’”
“Daddy takes us on rides all the time,” my soon-to-be no longer youngest said. “Why did yours say no?”
She sighed and twisted so that she lay on her side in the bed. “Mainly because he was worried about our safety. He didn’t want us to be hurt. When we were young, really young, we were hurt. And my dad didn’t like that. He wanted to make sure we were always safe, and that meant he protected us from harm in any way possible. Riding motorcycles, he decided, was a hazard to our health.”
“Did you like riding on the motorcycle?”
“Not as much as I would’ve thought,” she admitted. “But I do remember the way my dad held on to me. How he felt like he was between me and the world.”
“He sounds like he was a good dad,” my youngest said.
“He was,” Clem answered. “I can’t tell you how many times that we snuck out. And instead of yelling at us right away, Papa Madden always made sure that we were safe, fed, and well rested before he yelled at us.”
My lips twitched at that.
Madden had always been the nicer of the two parents.
I would’ve lit into their asses.
Hell, I did on multiple occasions.
Usually, when they needed picked up from parties, I wasn’t the first one they called. Madden had been.
Mostly because they knew they faired way better with Madden than they did with me.
“I wish I could’ve met him.”
“He was a badass,” Boston interjected.
It surprised me, because I hadn’t realized he was in my bedroom, too.
He had to be on the other side of the bed, because all I could see was my side, which was closest to the door and the window, which was where Sophia lay.
“Do you remember that time that Jasper snuck out, and Madden happened to be in his police cruiser riding down the road when he caught him doing it?” Clem laughed hysterically. “He scared the absolute crap out of him.”
“The piss, too,” Boston confirmed. “He really was the best. Y’all will never understand how much so. But we’ll tell you. Everything. And when you look at your little brother, you’ll know that’s exactly how Madden used to be. So serious and so ferocious at the same time. Sometimes I couldn’t even look him in the eyes because he scared the crap out of me.”
“I’m like him?” Madden, named after his namesake, asked. “Really?”
“Really,” Clem agreed. “You’re exactly like him. You even look like him.”
My daughter wasn’t wrong.
Sometimes when I looked at mini-Madden, I saw my best friend, and it made my heart ache.
But not in a bad way.
In a sweet, I want him to look like that forever, kind of way.
Slipping my boots off at the door, I walked around the doorjamb and found my bed full.
There really wasn’t room for me, but upon seeing me, they all squished together and made room, even though it meant that there had to be some overlapping.
All of those faces and big hearts, they were all mine.
Every single one of them.
I made myself comfortable in the middle, and everyone piled in tight.
“Daddy,” mini-Madden said. “Tell us your favorite story about Papa Madden.”
I smiled.
“There was this one time, when we were kids, he thought it would be a great idea to join the police department…”